Unique Investing Community to Expand into Asset Management
Covestor, the world’s first portfolio sharing service, today announced the close of $6.5 million dollars in Series A funding. The company plans to use the money to build out its asset management platform, allowing users to invest alongside the self-directed investors in its community, rather than in an expensive managed fund. The funding round was led by Union Square Ventures (USV) and Spark Capital, who are also joined by one of Europe’s leading technology investors Amadeus Capital Partners. Todd Dagres of Spark and Albert Wenger of USV will join the Covestor board.
Covestor.com is the first service to allow users to share and track actual investment decisions. It provides an online platform for existing or would-be fund managers to showcase their investment strategies and to build a verified performance record. This allows members to compete on a level playing field with professional money managers. Since launching in public beta in summer 2007 Covestor already hosts more than 10 times as many ‘money managers’ than work for any single professional firm worldwide.
“In our first nine months we have demonstrated that there are tens of thousands of self-directed investors out there who are as good, if not better than the pros,” said Rikki Tahta, Co-Founder and CEO of Covestor. “To accelerate our growth we are excited to be working with a combination of the best VCs that the US and Europe have to offer.”
“Covestor gives individual investors a unique platform on which to compete and benefit as if they were professionals,” said Albert Wenger of USV. “We are excited about the company’s potential to find great investment talent and to challenge the underperforming Mutual Fund industry.”
Anne Glover, Chief Executive, Amadeus Capital Partners, added: “Our investment in Covestor is very much in line with our strategy of supporting companies led by serial entrepreneurs that offer disruptive technologies and/or disruptive business models. Covestor falls squarely into this category and although its initial focus is on the US, we see huge global potential for its platform in the European, and particularly, Asian markets.